Electronic control and operating systems are becoming increasingly common in vehicles such as aircraft. For example, electronic braking systems and electronic stability systems are gaining favor in new aircraft designs. An antiskid feature of an aircraft electronic braking system may utilize one or more accelerometers that are designed to detect fore/aft acceleration of the aircraft landing gear during braking maneuvers. This directional acceleration data can be utilized as an input to the antiskid control system to augment landing gear strut stability when antiskid control is active.
Accelerometers typically need to be configured with at least one known orientation or direction. For example, in an aircraft application, an accelerometer may need to be physically positioned and/or electronically configured such that it can distinguish between the fore and aft directions of the aircraft. In connection with an antiskid feature, proper accelerometer orientation enables the landing gear stability algorithms to augment stability by applying brakes out of phase with the fore/aft deflection of the landing gear. In this regard, a conventional accelerometer deployment may require a technician to confirm that the accelerometer hardware is installed in a specific position and orientation relative to the aircraft and/or perform an electronic initialization or pin setting that indicates the fore/aft orientation of the accelerometer hardware. This conventional methodology may result in incorrect installation of accelerometers, and does not enable accelerometer hardware to be freely exchanged from one location to another without reconfiguring the hardware.
Accordingly, it is desirable to have a technique for automatically detecting the fore/aft orientation of an aircraft. In addition, it is desirable to have a technique for automatically configuring accelerometers used for aircraft antiskid control systems. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of embodiments of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and the foregoing technical field and background.